# The Chinese Bible Uses 2,996 Characters

> Reading the whole Chinese Union Version (和合本, simplified) means recognising 2,996 distinct Chinese characters — but the 73 most frequent already cover half of the text, and 971 cover 95% of it.

Question: how many unique characters Chinese Bible
Answer: 2,996
Page: https://chinese-bible.com/en/reference/how-many-unique-characters

2,996 distinct characters is a smaller number than most learners expect, and it is a far smaller number than the 921,149 character occurrences in the text. It is also close to the size of a general-purpose literacy target: the HSK 3.0 lists cover roughly three thousand characters.

Because character frequency is steeply uneven, partial knowledge goes a long way. The curve below says how many of the most frequent characters are needed to cover a given share of every character occurrence in the Bible.

The 32 characters that occur in all 66 books are the ones worth knowing first: 是 的 行 在 要 有 就 了 为 这 一 出 来 并 都 大. At the other end, 2,579 words occur exactly once in the entire Bible.

## Characters needed to cover the text

| Share of the text | Most frequent characters needed |
| --- | --- |
| 50% | 73 |
| 80% | 355 |
| 90% | 648 |
| 95% | 971 |
| 99% | 1,699 |

Counted over all character occurrences in the simplified text, punctuation excluded.

## Questions

**Is that enough to read a newspaper too?**

Partly. The Bible's 2,996 characters overlap heavily with everyday vocabulary, but Scripture also uses names and cultic terms a newspaper never does — 662 of the words here look like proper names, and 22.5% of word tokens are outside the HSK lists.

**Which book uses the fewest different characters?**

2 John, with 151 distinct characters across 393 characters of text.

**How many distinct words is that?**

11,168 distinct words, once the text is segmented into words rather than characters.

## Method

- Text: 和合本 (Chinese Union Version), simplified script — public domain
- Words: forward maximum matching against CC-CEDICT (this site's own segmentation)
- HSK levels: HSK 3.0 levels from the complete-hsk-vocabulary list; band 7 covers HSK 7-9
- Reading times: 260 characters a minute (an assumption)
- Computed: 2026-09-22

These are reproducible counts over a public-domain text, not a peer-reviewed study. Difficulty ranks are one stated formula, not a validated readability score.


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- Definitions: CC-CEDICT, licensed CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).
- If you share this file onward, keep this notice and share alike.
- Character data: Make Me a Hanzi (Arphic Public License / LGPL).
- Bible text: public domain — 和合本 · World English Bible · Louis Segond 1910.
- Built with https://chinese-bible.com